Blog Category

Ethiopia

Smallholder and agrifood SME resilience to shocks: Lessons from COVID-19 for the UN Food System Summit

Jun 17th, 2021 • by THOMAS REARDON, JOHAN SWINNEN and ROB VOS

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed both the vulnerability and the resilience of food supply chains. Supply chains from farm to retail have been disrupted, primarily by government-imposed lockdowns and other restrictions affecting labor supply, input provisioning, logistics, wholesale, retailing, and food service. Supply chains have also shown a good deal of resilience and innovative capacity to adapt to the major supply and demand shocks they encountered.

Increasing resilience requires an effective framework for measurement

Nov 16th, 2015 • by Sara Gustafson

In the face of price spikes, climate change, and other stressors from the national to the global scale, the promotion of resilience has gained traction in the development community as a means of insuring that populations vulnerable to food and nutrition insecurity are equipped with the tools to survive and even thrive in our unpredictable world.

The Future in Mind: Aspirations and Forward-Looking Behaviour in Rural Ethiopia

Sep 24th, 2014 • by Sara Gustafson

A person’s aspirations, or goals and targets for their future, can be a driving force in their life, providing motivation and guiding their choices. But when forming aspirations, all people dismiss some options for their future lives, and fail to even imagine other options or opportunities. Once formed, our aspirations can limit the possible futures we consider by focusing our attention on some future options and filtering out others.